Variable frequency motor drives offer a number of potential advantages including opportunities for enhanced efficiency, control, and performance. Yet they also pose a number of design challenges including a need to protect power electronics circuitry and components from overvoltage conditions which can result in catastrophic failures. Various attempts have been made to address these concerns including providing line reactors, fuses and/or circuit breakers between a power supply and a drive front end, using metal oxide varistors, snubber circuits and/or oversized DC bus capacitors in the drive, and using transistor-based switches or active transistor based voltage clamping or circuitry. While these approaches provide some benefits they all suffer from limitations and shortcomings. These disadvantages can be of particular concern for high load drive applications such as compressor drives for heating, ventilation, air conditioning or refrigeration (HVACR) systems such as chiller systems. There remains a significant need for the unique and inventive variable frequency drive overvoltage protection, apparatuses, methods and systems disclosed herein.